Lee,

Thank you, very inspiring story.

How do you find this affects your everyday life, interactions with people, mental states, etc?

How's the feeling of self, ego and so on.

My everyday life feels considerably lighter in substance. Some things seem to not happen anymore. For instance, Papanca or compulsive proliferating mind seems gone. The mind can and still does wander, but I am no longer trapped in mind loops or proliferation. If I set intention to drop the content, it falls away effortlessly. That's new to the latest path.

I went on a job interview the other day, overall went well but had at least one technical person grill me with a chip on his shoulder. I took his grilling and his attitude with a sense of ease. I still hope I get the job, but am not worried if I don't. In the past situations like this would be the source of a bit more anxiety.

There is a sense that everyone is really free to be themselves. The need for me to make myself right and people wrong is significantly reduced. This attitude started growing shortly after I started practicing and got a nice boost on the last path.

Most of my life, I have struggled with addictive tendencies which seem to be reducing day by day. The old staples are still there but are gradually softening and new addictive patterns don't seem to be forming. I don't try to interfere or impose my will, I just watch these patterns play themselves out.

When I meet a new person (or old friend), my capacity to engage, listen and not compulsively inject myself into the conversation seems increased. When people complain or express pain, compassion naturally arises most of the time. Previously it would be indifference or annoyance or occasionally compassion. Compassion is more the norm. My capacity to share in another's joy (Mudita) is much much higher. In fact, I would say my ability to tap into feelings of any of the Brahma Viharas simply requires inclining the mind.

I still get angry, upset, annoyed, impatient scared and every other negative human emotion imaginable. However if one has me in it's grips, it only takes a certain kind of remembering to regain a sense of wholeness and freedom as the context for the negative emotion.



The feeling of self is significantly diminished. I wont say I have a profound sense of centerlessness, but I do have a fairly regular perception of the insubstantial nature of other and can incline the mind this way when I want. Impermanence is generally fairly effortless to see in all phenomena as well. One direct insight I got prior to this last path was that selfing/othering is in fact the same as clinging/aversion. And the sensations involved in selfing, othering, clinging, aversion are all quite similar and all of those activities produce the same effect. Selfing and clinging solidify and strengthen sense of self through expanding identification. Othering and aversion create an enemy that can self can be contrasted with and polarized against thereby solidifying and strengthening it.

Ego is there and fully functioning, but generally I don't take it to seriously or get nearly as invested in perpetuating.

Another interesting side effect is the difference between being mindful and not being mindful doesn't seem all that significant. If I am making an effort to be mindful, then I forget a while, then I remember, I don't feel much of a shift. It's like a part of me never left or forgot. This point feels a bit harder to explain beyond that. This is also new since my last retreat.

The way I practice has changed as well. Mostly I'll relax, allow my concentration to gather naturally and drop an occasional question or mantra. My current favorites include: "allowing everything to be as it is...", "who am I?", "what (in my current experience) isn't empty?", "what is awareness?", "what is simple awareness?".

Ditto on a lot of that. It's really great to read about similar experiences from someone else's reports!



Man, I just went through that issue about a week ago. The question came out of nowhere and suddenly seemed important to solve. I think originally there can seem to be an important difference between the feeling of being mindful and normal fixation behaviour because we have the idea that in the former state there is more awareness, but this also unconsciously strengthens a sense of self being aware, which in turn also creates some craving towards the mindful state (which links in nicely to your selfing/othering = clinging/aversion insight). Slowly you realise that mindful or not, it's still self-arising empty sensations. Like you, I just don't feel so much of a shift between the two states now and there's less "you should be being more mindful!" No need to get my zen staff out



My current favourites are "where is this experience happening?" (where is this *experience* happening, not "where are the objects in it"!) and "do not separate awareness and appearance", which is more of a reminder than a koan, but seems to help me out when I'm unconsciously reifying some aspect of my mental experience.

Hi Lee - I'm new to the site, and have just read your report on your practice. It was really interesting to read such an evocative, thorough and well-considered account!

A couple of the issues struck me quite forcibly - everything being lighter in tone; the much-reduced prapanca; the business of 'just watching' patterns in your life play themselves (hopefully, I suppose, play themselves out in wider awareness!); of letting people be themselves more without having to get in on the act; but particularly, this seeing that 'self' and 'other' are just other names for the process of clinging and aversion to sensations.

This last has become clearer to me the last year or so too. At best when sitting, I can see the odd process of identifying with some particular bunch of fluid sensations going on in an open non-reactive space, like a piece of string which has tied itself into a knot amidst other pieces of string which are floating around just happily straight (sorry about the metaphor!). Looked at macroscopically, you get 'self' and 'other', persons and things, mine and yours. In detail, there are the streams of sensations and events seen in the light of open awareness. The sensations are just themselves, but the knot-tying seems to comes from the mind-sense; it seems to be a constant stream of 'holding-on' events, that can superficially make it look as though you are just giving attention to these sensations, but this stream is in fact quite tiresome and distorting of the field. The general bunch of sensations honoured with this knotting-process changes over time, and does seem to actually change the experience of the sensations so honoured. It feels pretty much cutting-edge for me to attend to this clearly - as ever, there is perhaps not much to actually 'do' about it beyond giving it awareness, though I find reflecting about it off the cushion, and discussion both helpful.